that pesky devil........

"The devil made me do it."
Flip Wilson introduced that long standing excuse for almost everything into the comedy scene loooong ago when I was young.  It is an excuse that comes in handy most days......even if it holds no water.  No one takes anyone seriously when they claim the devil made them do it.

Yet we get this story about Jesus and the devil and temptations in the wilderness and we have to figure out what the writer is trying to tell us.  Certainly Jesus can and does resist the temptations that the devil puts in front of him.

They are telling temptations: #1 to satisfy his own needs (since he was seriously hungry for bread) over and above whatever God the Father had in mind for him.
              #2 to satisfy his own ego needs by claiming all kinds of status with a little bit of showmanship as he throws himself off a high place and waits for the angels to catch him.  Who doesn't have some ego needs that seek a bit of status?
              #3 to satisfy himself with a grab for power, really big power.  The devil offers this world and all the power it holds if Jesus will throw over his loyalty to God the Creator and take up worship of the devil instead.  Wow!  Power!  Pretty enticing.

Why are we told this story?  What does the author of Luke want us to see here?  Is there something here that might help us as followers of Jesus to make our way in this world?

Those are good questions and I certainly don't have the definitive answers to them but let's explore.  Why are we told this story?  It could be to show that Jesus didn't just float through this world and this life.  The temptations that we face, Jesus faced as well.  Although we can talk about satisfying our lusts for food or power or status, I think there is a much larger temptation being thrown at Jesus.  It is a temptation we face as well, we just don't recognize it when it comes our way.

The big temptation here is for Jesus to give up what God the Father is calling him to do.....to mend and heal the world for the sake of the world which is loved by its creator....and instead to do what makes Jesus feel good, look good, and stand in a position of power.

God was setting Jesus out on a mission to the world where love, sacrifice and service were the foundation for power.  Jesus was not sent out to stand among the rulers of the world but among the oppressed.  Jesus was not sent to satisfy himself but to feed the hungry.  Jesus was not sent to pull off crazy stunts to get everyone's attention.  He was sent to be the source of all life, joined with the God Creator in unison bringing about a new thing.

As followers of Jesus, that is what we are called to do as well.  Therefore, we face the same temptation: to throw over our loyalty and trust in the Creator God and join the secular team of this world.

Makes giving up a little bread look a lot easier, right?

Makes everyone a little uncomfortable......

It's the story of the Transfiguration.  Jesus goes up a mountain to pray, 3 disciples come along and the next thing you know, Elijah and Moses (both long, long dead) are standing next to a Jesus who is dazzling white, shining, maybe even 'other worldly.'

Peter is so taken aback that he starts babbling about building booths, presumably for the 3 figures before him, perhaps so that they can be worshipped......or given shelter.....or, frankly, only heaven knows what Peter was thinking.

Soon a cloud overshadows all the characters and a voice.....everyone just presumes it is God because who else speaks out of a cloud (Moses had this same experience).......declared "This is my Beloved.  My Chosen.  Listen to him."  Moses and Elijah disappear.

As quickly as it had begun, it was over.

I am thinking that Peter was fairly uncomfortable; James and John too.  Confused, bedazzled, frightened, unsure and most definitely uncomfortable.  But then, being in the presence of the Divine has that effect on people I am told.

Not that I have ever experienced 'the cloud' of God's presence nor heard a voice out of no where speak for the Divine. Entering into the mystery of God is anything but an everyday event. 

Uncomfortable seems a reasonable response.  

That or sheer terror.

Because in that moment the gap between the Divine and us is soooooo clear.

So I pray that everyone has some kind of encounter with the Divine today just because in that moment when we realize the enormity of God we also come to understand the dependence of humankind.

It is also when we realize that when this one says, "I am with you always" just how big a promise that truly is.

Listen to him!

"

"This is my Beloved, my Chosen One.  Listen to him!"
Those are God's instructions to the befuddled disciples on the top of Transfiguration Mountain.

Why "listen"

Why not "follow"  or "obey" or "worship" or "believe in" ?

Clearly the writer of Luke, where this particular version of the Transfiguration story is found, was trying to make a point with this instruction to listen.  What could that be?

In Luke's telling of the Jesus story, angels are prominent.  Now, in spite of what TV would have you believe, angels are not fluffly, guardian protectors.  Angels are messengers and in Luke they are always telling someone something they never imagined they would hear.  They bring God messages.

So perhaps it is right that God's message on the mountain was to "Listen" to the one, the Son of God, who was God in their midst, God at work in their world, God mending and healing the nations.  Listen to what Jesus has to say.  You should be hearing a new and strange thing that you never imagined before.

Just possibly, if you aren't hearing something strange and confusing, you aren't listening.  Sure, some of the words Jesus spoke were ancient texts from the Hebrew scriptures, texts that observant Jews would know....old words....with old meanings....old understandings.  Could God mean that the ancient words now have a new and unexpected meaning?

Then there are the old stories, like the feeding of the widow of Zarephath or the healing of Naaman the Syrian or the marriage of Boaz and Ruth the Moabite.  Jesus doesn't exactly change the story, he simply opens the meaning:  while Israel was certain that God was exclusively theirs, there has always been rich and ancient evidence that God has been at work throughout all the nations all along.

Add to this that time that Jesus took some of the ancient words and applied them to himself.  "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me to preach good news to the poor, release to the captives, to give sight to the blind and to set the oppressed free."  Isaiah first wrote those words around 600 BC and there in Nazareth Jesus claims they apply to him.

Then there were the words that spoke of his coming arrest, suffering, death and resurrection: impossible, painful, horrific words.  Those were words that had to be listened to as well.  Things were not going to go along the path that the disciples imagined; there would be suffering, there would be death.....and this too, there would be resurrection.

So, perhaps, before we can follow or obey or worship or believe in this God, we need to listen closely to what is being said.  This will help us in our daily struggle to follow Jesus and not our own rich imagination.  Too often it is our own voice (with the volume cranked up) that we mistake for God.

Listen for God, when you pray, when you are dividing up your income, when you encounter your cranky, impolite, sad, angry neighbors, when the darkness threatens to close over you.  Listen.  God speaks a new and unimaginable thing in Jesus......and it is out of love for you.

Give me Ears to Hear

Give Me Ears to Hear

Lord,

I believe

     my life is touched by you,

        that you want something for me,

    and out of me.

Give me ears

      to hear you,

eyes

     to see the tracing of your finger,

and a heart

     quickened by the motions

      of your Spirit.*

As we listen this Lent, Lord may we also hear.

*from Ted Loder,  Guerrillas of Grace

A celebrity Jesus

You know how we (the public) is inclined to think that celebrities have it easy?  With nannies and drivers and cleaning services and private airplanes their lives appear so much easier than ours.  And, of course, they have a beauty factor going for them.  If not beautiful, at the least folks know who they are when they stop by the local grocery store for milk (should they ever do anything so mundane.)

Just by writing that all down, it is clear how silly it is.  My world might be smaller than theirs, but then my mistakes are not the grist of tabloid headlines and heated bar discussions.  My family might be unhappy with me, but the guy pumping gas next to me has nothing to say about me or my life.  I am protected in many ways by my very anonymity.

One of the dilemmas of Christian doctrine is the duality of Jesus:  fully human, fully divine.  So when Jesus acts, it is God acting.  At the same time, when Jesus gets hungry, it is Joseph's boy having a second helping of fish.  When theologians talk about this it is called Christology: what does it mean for Jesus to be the Anointed One?  How is Jesus God?  How is Jesus human?

That was a long introduction to the story of the temptations in the wilderness.  Our tendency when reading the story is to dismiss Jesus' response to power and fame and even bread with an unspoken flick of our hand because, in the end, Jesus was God.  How hard could it be for him to say No?

When we take this path, Jesus' feet never really touch the dust of our roads.  This is the Jesus who never feared, never cried as a baby, never worried about tomorrow.  Even if he was 'human' it wasn't human like you and me.  If our Jesus is this kind of Emmanuel (God with us) than he wasn't really 'with us' but just floating through our world.  This Jesus never really walked with the masses, so when I call on his name in distress or in repentance, how could this Jesus relate to a very real me?

Of course we could take the other fork in the road and diminish his divinity, making him human just like we are human.  Stand in this corner too long and you will be convinced that Jesus wasn't quite as good as everyone said he was, or, [and this is the most dangerous place] since Jesus could do it, we can too.  We just have to try a little harder, work longer, be more committed.  In the end we don't have a Savior, we have a Very Good Role Model.

In the wilderness, Jesus is confronted with the kinds of temptations we all face:  the temptation to fulfill our own lusts without regard for others; the temptation to trade our God given call in this world for a little status and a few gold stars, and the temptation to grab all the power we can while we can. It is not too difficult to translate these temptations into the reality of our lives.

We watch as Jesus figures out how to face these temptations - again and again leaning on God.  In the end he was still hungry, still unknown, still powerless in this world's accounting of power.  But he understood a little bit more about trusting in God, following God's lead and perhaps being a part of building a new creation. We watch as Jesus acts in perfect harmony with God (and with his true nature) - bringing the presence of God into our midst.

Jesus chose God's lead.  It didn't 'solve' his problems but it made him a part of God's solution for all of creation.

Still having trouble wrapping your head around all that?  Me too.

Lean on God.  See where it leads you.

strong enough to endure ....your grace

In our last episode, Jesus was standing in the wilderness salivating over a collection of stones.  He was hungry.  He could turn the stones into bread.  He didn't.  I think that the more we know about Jesus, the less we understand.

This week my colleagues and I have been using a poem/prayer by Ted Loder to guide our prayers for one another.  Here it is

Lead Me Out of My Doubts and Fears

Eternal God,

lead me now

    out of the familiar setting

          of my doubts and fears,

     beyond my pride and my need to be secure

into a strange and graceful ease

    with my true proportions

    and with yours;

that in boundless silence

  I may grow

    strong enough to endure

       and flexible enough to share

            your grace.*

I can't but hear this prayer as I read about Jesus in the wilderness 

and wrestle with how I am to live as a follower of this Jesus.  

Lead me out of the familiar setting............where I am too comfortable, too blind and deaf to the details

....of my doubts and fears.............oh, that kind of familiar place.  I think I am too comfortable there as well

beyond my pride.......................I can do this.  I will work harder.  I will be the best

and need to be secure...............with food in the cupboard and money in the bank

into a strange and graceful ease.........I am never graceful, stumbling around, uncertain.  There is no ease

with my true proportions.......... a true picture of the true me, with gifts and limits

and with yours.........................beyond all my imagining, and most days beyond even my believing, 

                                                            the eternity of you

that in boundless silence I may grow........silence is the rarest commodity in my life

strong enough to endure...........yes, I expected that I'd have to endure... suffering....and what else?

and flexible enough to share..................What is this?  Sharing what?  With whom?

...........your grace.

Now I am driven to my knees, watching, listening in the wilderness as you as God take up the frailness of my humanity and wrap it in the power of the Creator....out of love.

Grace too much to bear.  

Today we read about the temptations Jesus endured in the wilderness and wonder what are we to learn from this?  How are we to grow as disciples?

Could it be our temptation to turn the Divine Grace into a 12 step self improvement program instead of allowing it to be the enormous gift it is?

*Ted Loder, Guerrillas of Grace

Here's an apple, my pretty......

I think that we often don't know what to do with the stories about Jesus.  I can tell you what the scholarship says about them, like why they were written and how the individual stories tell a larger story, but for most of us, the difficult part is not the interpretation (although that has its challenges) but how to translate them into the fabric of our lives.

Or, look at it this way.  Even those among us who have professed Jesus as the Son of God and Savior not only of the world but of me as well, continue to be seekers.  We seek after another, deeper meaning or a greater certitude.  On many days, I would like to see more permanent results from this in-breaking of God's kingdom....not just 'out there' but inside of me as well.  Sometimes I am a great disappointment to myself.

All of this on the Sunday when we open Lent with Luke's version of the wilderness temptations (Luke 4.1-12).  As it begins, we watch as Jesus, absolutely famished from fasting, turns down the opportunity to turn stones into bread.  

I'm glad Luke started with an easy one.  We almost get this one.  He was hungry.  He had the ability.  Who would have criticized Jesus for this most basic of self-care?  Shouldn't Jesus have eaten a little so to be strong enough for the tests that were coming next?

And yet Jesus' response was to reject his own need for the Father's plan.  In Jesus' calculus, God's Word was the bread that feeds us - and is so potent it can feed us even after 40 days of want.

You have questions?  I have questions, and to this end: so that this story of my Lord can enlighten me and how I live my days and how I rely on God and how I am fed.

First, although Luke tells us it is the devil who brings this temptation, don't you think Jesus was looking at those stones and contemplating what it would take to make them edible?  Do you really think it took the devil to bring that possibility to Jesus' attention?  Was the devil a force outside of Jesus.....or a voice within?

Did Jesus reject the negative force of his human desires? lusts? wants? in order to take up God's trajectory of life lived dependent on God?  Is this an exchange of the me-me-me attitude for the "What would you have me do, Lord?" stance?  Is laying down our desires/needs the first step in learning to love our neighbors?

Now there is a lot to be said about self-indulgence: my right to be angry or demanding or selfish.  But is this a story about self-indulgence? Or is it a story about the primacy of God's Word in our lives - from the most difficult decisions to the day to day needs of a hungry stomach.  God's Word first, always first.

Are we to listen to this Jesus and walk away saying to ourselves, "If I only trusted God more, I could do that too.  I could resist this temptation."?....which will lead us almost immediately to an [impossible] resolve to do better, to trust more, to be like Jesus; to be the kind of person that Jesus loves.

Each and every day getting better in every way.  Trusting, believing, resisting.

And with that, the Devil cries, "Got you!"

See how well I explained that?  

Not.

Marked with ashes.......

We are marked with ashes

It is not clear whether these ashes

are the sign of a beginning or an ending.

We start with “Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return.” These words accompany this ashen cross we wear and they are intended to remind us that we were formed out of dust. 

Once, two small cells that were joined,

received the breath of life,

grew and loved and hurt and lost,

and would one day return to dust again…

…return to the God who granted life in the beginning.

These ashes are personal.  They are about you and they are about me.  One day we will no longer be.

So these ashes are clearly a sign of an ending.

 My ending.  Your ending.

But there is more.  These ashes also mark the end of a world where might makes right, where the powerless are trampled without regard. 

The end of life as we know it, where gaining

‘one more win” is more valuable than righteousness. 

Where peace with our neighbor is easily relinquished

and the bystander counted unimportant

in order to further our own agenda. 

A world where we will grasp at adventure You Only Live Once

While giving up authenticity and honor in our lives.

 If the ashes mark the end of that life, Then Hurray!

But maybe they are a symbol of a beginning as well?  Of a new being formed?  Of a call to a new way of life?

These ashes are also intended to mark the turning point at which our journey starts along another road,

a different path, living out life in a new and powerful way.

It’s a path where we find ourselves truly loved,

 where we can stop running so hard,

working endlessly to prove ourselves worthy

and where our mistakes, big and small,

are neither labels or barriers to belonging.

A path where the talents and gifts we have – the stuff we want to contribute to others – can be put to work building good. 

These ashes join us to Jesus who put aside

the trappings of this world of power,

 exchanged revenge for mercy and forgiveness,

who built bridges for peace. 

The ashes mark us as new people,

beginning again in the journey along the Jesus path,

taking up the Jesus way, living life in Jesus. 

This ashen path is the path we truly want to take.

So we take on the ashes again, believing we are more than willing

 to leave behind

and cut off

and put to death our investment in the old way,

to give it all over to the dust of death. 

Not just the parts of the old way that caused us harm,

but also the parts that we liked.

Last year, on Palm Sunday, we waved palm branches to honor the coming of a king.  We shouted our Hosannas and rejoiced in Jesus’ presence among us.

The, for another year, we tried to remember

that the praises were only temporary

and the sacrifice was just beginning. 

But it is so easy to forget, because the glory is so addicting.

So we come again and turn those palms of praise into ashes

…we begin again the struggle to live with our heart

and soul and spirit and daily life joined to Jesus

while our feet shuffle along in this world. 

Yet again we confess to God and to one another

 that the path behind this Jesus is long and difficult,

and we have found a thousand ways to stumble and fall. 

We commit again that the ending will truly be an ending

so our new beginnings in Jesus can truly begin.

These ashes mark both an ending and a beginning.  Death and life. 

May you be blessed by these ashes……in the dying…….in the new birth…….and in the Jesus whose love is at the heart of it all…. 

Receive these ashes.......

"Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return."

We begin at our baptism.

The end comes with our funeral.

No one knows the distance between the first and the last.

Today we pinch our lives somewhere in the middle of it all

and bring the water of our baptism

to touch the anointing of our death.

And we remember.  

God has claimed us in love.

Christ's death will carry us into a new life.

An ashen cross, a gift of life.

Confession and deep, deep gratitude.

Amen

Can't see beyond the border.....

It shouldn't surprise us that there was some kind of competition between Capernaum and Nazareth.  We humans are always comparing ourselves to one another and, of course, wanting to come out on top.  We have this terrible tendency to treat everything in life......even life itself.....as some kind of contest.  (That, in fact, might be a good definition for original sin.  I'll think about it.)

This, often hidden, tendency to want to be the best pops right up when (after an outpouring of the Holy Spirit) Jesus takes on God's mission as his mission - to mend and heal the world, i.e. "to preach good news to the poor, recovery of sight to the blind, release to the captives."

There was amazement that day.  The Gospel of Luke tells us so.  I also think there was that giddy kind of nervous laughter mixed with joy that occurs when something GOOD and TOTALLY UNEXPECTED comes your way.  Wow!

And, just think.  It's Joseph's boy.  One of our own.  From here in Nazareth.  Wow!  This is going to be something.

And it will be something.....something for the entire cosmos.....those who live in Nazareth and those who live in Capernaum.  Those who follow Torah and those who do not.  Those who do dastardly deeds and those who are faithful and obedient.  Jesus' mission is to mend and heal the entire world.  Not just Nazareth. Not just you.  Not just me.

Seems reasonable to you and me, but apparently there were a bunch in the crowd who were truly unhappy with this turn of events.  Jesus was their homeboy.  He owed it to his village to take care of them - if not exclusively, then at least well ahead of everyone else.  Otherwise, how are we going to one-up Capernaum, the next village over?

Healing belongs here, they might say.  Charity begins at home.  Take care of our own people first.  Use your talents and gifts and time right here.  If anything is left over for those other folks, fine.  But us first.

Which of course is another definition for original sin.  Us first; them maybe.

Know why I call it original sin?  Because we all do it.  Perhaps not all the time; but we all do it.  We all secretly believe that there is only a limited amount of Jesus to go around.  Forgiveness is limited.  Healing is limited.  Reconciliation is limited.  Heaven is limited.

So we will build walls, put up fences, set up check points, have secret passwords, stare down the outsiders, stand our ground when a stranger appears at our pew, never wear our name tag (because everyone knows us) nor introduce ourselves to new people (because it is their job to get to know us)....and a thousand, thousand other things to keep US and THEM separate.

Of course, Jesus gets lost in all of this.  The Jesus who loved all in the face of hate and forgave all in the face of death.  The Jesus who died at our hands yet blesses our hands again and again.  The Jesus who invites YOU to the table as he moves in this world, mending and healing and loving.  The Jesus who is Good News for us.

I can't decide if I should cry at my own stupidity or rejoice at Jesus' overwhelming love.  Or maybe both.

That, and try to refrain from building walls.